Best Of Makeovers Bundle Part 63

Tightening his resolve, Reid shook his head. "I know you're right." He tapped the center of the file on his desk with his forefinger. "But if we can just-"

With uncharacteristic brusqueness, Matt interrupted him. "You know what your problem is, Reid?"

Reid was too surprised by Matt's question to respond with anything other than, "No. What?"

"You take this all too seriously." Reid tried to protest, but Matt didn't give him the chance. "No, hear me out. When you took over your father's job after he died, we all thought you did the right thing. Finally lived up to your responsibilities."

Reid accepted the compliment with a nod. "Thank you."

"We were wrong."

"Huh?"

"Look, Reid, this is a job, not jail time."

"What are you talking about?"

"You see this job-this company-as an obligation. Something you owe your parents for taking you in."

"No, I don't. I love this company."

"No. You loved your father. That's admirable. But you feel indebted to him. And you think running Forester+Blake will somehow pay him back."

"That's ridiculous."

"I don't think so. If you want to fill your father's shoes you're going to have to find a way to have a little more fun here. Your father loved this job. He loved this business. He didn't treat it like a ch.o.r.e."

Reid rocked back in his chair. "Are you telling me we're losing accounts because I'm not having enough fun at work?"

Matt shook his head ruefully. "Look, take it however you want. Whether business is good or bad isn't the point."

"Then what is?"

"The point is, you're working yourself to death here. If you don't find something to enjoy in this job you're going to make yourself crazy. You'll burn out and end up hating this company. That's the last thing your father would have wanted."

Annoyed by Matt's a.s.sessment, he said, "My father wouldn't have wanted us to lose money, either."

"Would it help if I told you Tres Bien is looking for new representation?"

"Tres Bien?" He searched his mind for a minute before making the connection. "The women's lingerie store?"

"Tres Bien, the very lucrative lingerie store."

He raised his eyebrows and let out a low whistle. "A little out of our league, isn't it?"

"Not necessarily. From what I hear, they're looking for a fresh approach." Matt flashed him an impish smile. "Fresh approaches are what we do best."

"We're a lot smaller than whoever they've been working with," Reid pointed out. "Will they even talk to us?"

"One of your father's buddies from college works in their marketing department. If you fly out there at the weekend, I think you can woo him into getting us the meeting."

A meeting with Tres Bien?

Every mall in the country had a Tres Bien. Landing this account would make all the difference. No financial disaster. No layoffs. No guilt about running his father's business into the ground.

If they could just- Once again, Matt interrupted his train of thought. "You know what I think?"

"I don't think I want to," Reid muttered.

"I think you should work on this yourself. I know, until now, I've always worked closely with the creatives and you've handled the financial end of things, but, let's face it, working with people is a lot more fun than working with numbers. You never know, you might actually enjoy your job." Matt didn't give him a chance to voice a denial before changing the subject. "By the way, you've heard about Teresa, right?"

"Teresa?"

"Yeah, her kid has appendicitis. She'll be out all week. Maybe longer."

Reid swallowed a groan of frustration. "Which means one of us will have to do the presentation at Butler."

"Actually, Jane's offered to do it."

"Jane?" Jane, who had barely squeaked out a word this afternoon, giving a make-it-or-break-it presentation?

Matt chuckled. "Don't worry. I'll go with her. I think this'll be good for her. She's ready for more responsibility, but sometimes gets a little intimidated. Besides, you'll need to get ready for your trip to New York."

Matt turned to leave, but Reid stopped him before he made it out the door. "Wait, one more thing."

"Shoot."

"Are people afraid of me?"

Matt raised his eyebrows. "Afraid of you? Who?"

"No one in particular. I was just curious."

"Not that I know of. But Angela thinks you scowl too much. And she wants you to come to dinner on your birthday."

"I'll think about it. But only if she doesn't try to set me up again."

"I'll pa.s.s along the message, but I can't promise she'll listen."

All alone in his office, he contemplated Matt's words. He'd been right about one thing: Reid didn't enjoy his job. Never had. He loved the company, if not the work. That would be enough.

Of course, Matt wanted him to work with the creatives, something Reid had avoided until now. For that matter, he didn't work closely with anyone other than Matt.

Being buddies with everyone at work might be more fun, but having fun wasn't his job. Running the company was. And emotional attachments to his employees would only make his job harder. When the time came to make tough decisions, he needed to be able to do what was right for the company, without letting his emotions get involved.

However, as much as he tried to maintain a certain distance between himself and his employees, this thing with Jane didn't sit right with him.

He certainly never meant to terrify anyone. He just didn't want to care more about their welfare than about the company. Besides, none of his father's employees had been afraid of him.

Shoving aside thoughts of his conversation with Matt, he reached for the creative file for the Butler account. He often looked over the work presented by his employees, but his interest was usually more professional than personal. Something about Jane just didn't fit. She was a mystery he couldn't ignore.

He opened the file, then turned it ninety degrees to look at the pictures inside. He flipped through them, scanning each one before going back to the beginning to study them in more detail.

On the fourth page, something caught his attention. Just there, in the close-up of a man's hand pressed into the carpet beside the woman's head. A lock of hair curled over his fingers to end just beside a heavy ring. Any native Texan would recognize the distinctive cla.s.s ring worn by everyone who graduated from Texas A&M University.

He glanced down at his right hand, where he wore his own chunky gold Aggie ring. About two inches down, a faint scar slashed across his skin. He'd been eleven when he'd gotten that scar from a fight outside school where the other kid had pulled a knife.

Two days later, after st.i.tches and a trip to the police station, the family he'd been fostered with at the time had sent him back to the group home, where he'd lived for nearly three years before the Foresters had taken him home when he was fourteen.

That scar had cost him a place with a nice family. That scar was proof he couldn't stay out of trouble even when it was in his own best interest. For years, he'd hated that scar. Then, the Foresters had taken him in, adopted him well past the age boys like him were ever adopted, and for the first time in his life he'd had security and stability.

Getting in that fight had been a stupid, reckless thing to do. He worked hard now to control those rash impulses of his. Mostly, he succeeded. Still, the scar was a constant reminder of just how much he had to lose.

The scar had faded almost completely in the twenty-one years since that fight. Most people didn't even notice it. But apparently Jane was very observant. Because the hand in the picture bore a scar nearly identical to his. Oh, she'd gotten the angle of it wrong. But that was definitely his scar, two inches below his Aggie ring, on his hand. Right there in the picture.

She wasn't afraid of him. She had a crush on him.

CHAPTER THREE.

"ARE you crazy?"

Jane glared at her best friend, Jack Keegan, as he sat sprawled on her sofa, his boots propped on her coffee table, the neck of a s.h.i.+ner Bock clenched between his fingers.

"No, I'm not crazy." She didn't bother to hide her exasperation. "I asked both of you here because I need your help."

She fixed what she hoped was a steady gaze on first Keegan and then Dorothea, the other half of "both of you". Her two friends couldn't be more opposite, but she hoped between the two of them they could muster up some decent advice.

She'd known Keegan since college, but she and Dorothea had been like soul mates ever since they'd met just a few years ago. Very odd soul mates, since Jane was a twenty-seven-year-old urban professional and Dorothea was a seventy-eight-year-old aging movie starlet. But they had a lot in common, since they both loved movies and volunteered at the Austin Animal Shelter. Jane only hoped that one of the things they didn't share was a sense of impending career-related doom.

Jane looked hopefully at Dorothea. "What do you think?"

"Let me consider..." Dorothea spoke slowly, each word p.r.o.nounced with a stage actress's care as she sat perched on the edge of a wingback chair, a martini-very dry-in one hand while she stroked the cat on her lap with the other. The cat, Sasha, was a gorgeous silver tabby Jane was fostering from the animal shelter. "The presentation is on Friday?"

"Yes."

"And Teresa took off work this afternoon?"

"Yes."

"Remind me again why someone else can't do the presentation for you."

Before Jane could answer, Keegan held up his hand. "I got this one." He twisted on the sofa to face Dorothea. "'Cause if she can do this presentation, then she'll prove to herself that she can ditch Teresa, head up her own team, and generally look like a genius. Of course, if she fails, they could lose the account." Shaking his head he turned his attention back to Jane. "Which wouldn't be good for your career in today's compet.i.tive market."

"Th-thanks, Keegan, that's very helpful."

"No problem, doll." Keegan winked salaciously.

Dorothea issued a thoughtful, "Hmm," as she continued to pet Sasha, which Jane couldn't help resenting a little, since the temperamental cat never allowed her to even get within petting distance.

Keegan took another gulp of his beer and said, "What I don't get is why you're so afraid of freezing up during the presentation."

"Because of my stu-"

"Yeah, right. Your stutter. But what's the big deal, really? So you stutter a little bit. As long as you don't freeze up-"

"But I do freeze up. All the time."

"Not all the time." Dorothea interrupted them. "At the animal shelter, I see you talking to strangers all the time. You can convince anyone who walks in to adopt a cat. Yes, sometimes you stutter while you're talking with them. But you never freeze up. Why is this situation at work any different?"

"It just is." She opened her mouth, trying to find the words to explain, but they simply weren't there.

The animal shelter was her haven. A place she felt completely comfortable. And completely determined to succeed.

But even more important, when she was talking to a stranger about a cat, she wasn't the center of attention. It wasn't about her. It was about the cat.

But an ad pitch meeting was completely different. With a pitch presentation she'd done, that was her up there on the screen. Her ideas. Her very soul. It made her feel so vulnerable.

That was why she froze up.

Or rather, why she'd frozen up in the past. This would be different. It had to be.

"But I can do this, right?" Jane prodded.

Dorothea's sharp gaze cut to hers. "You want to know if you can overcome your stutter long enough to give an important presentation? And your job is at stake if you don't succeed?"

"Y-yes," she said, far more boldly than she felt.

"Oh, man." Keegan chuckled. "You are so screwed."

She glared at him. "Could you at least try to be helpful?"

He yanked his feet off her coffee table and leaned forward, bracing his hands on his knees. "You want my advice?"

"Yes. But only if it's something more helpful than 'Are y-you crazy?' and 'Y-you are so screwed'."

"Okay, here's my advice. Don't do it."

"I w-was looking for something a little more productive than that. Maybe something a little more professional. I mean, weren't y-you a speech therapy major for a semester?"

Keegan stretched out his legs again. "Honey, I was a lot of majors for a semester."

Resisting the urge to shake him by the shoulders, she all but yelled, "Then, be helpful. I don't get what is wr-wr-wrong with y-you. For y-years you've been telling me to do something about Teresa. And now that I am, y-you're acting like a total a.s.s."